[naravara]

>I don't understand why Congress doesn't incrementally, predictably, and slowly raise the retirement age for Social Security. It was never intended as a retirement program - instead it an insurance for those those that lived beyond the average life expectancy.

This is absolutely untrue. Here is FDR's address as he signed Social Security into law: https://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstmts.html#signing

This doesn't sound at all like it's not meant to be a retirement program. He even explicitly uses the word 'pension.'

"Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age."

[Terr_]

Well, it was always literally an insurance program -- the "I" in OASDI.